There’s something primal about communities. Human beings have lived in them, created them and sought them out as long as they were able to chuck rocks at the sabre tooth tiger or rub two sticks into a piece of kindling. The tribe is a key facet in our psychological make up and, therefore, a key element of successful marketing.
This week we’ve been looking exclusively at youth marketing in the context of non profits, NGOs and the public sector. One of the key challenges facing this sector is the received wisdom available rests on the crutch of traditional, outdated methods of approaching youth – namely high viz advertising campaigns that do more to win your agency awards than your brand customers. It’s uncommon to find risk taking the norm within public sector, that’s why they can be stuck between ill-equipped advisors and a corporate culture that favors maintaining the status quo.
So what do you do? Well, take a look at this ebook (reg required for mobileYouthnet – the youth research community) we published especially for the sector to help them understand that a) the traditional approach to engaging youth by “telling them you’re cool” through high viz advertising is, to put it simply, broken and b) rest assured that the trail to effective engagement has already been blazed by what are now well established methodologies executed in the commercial field and now returning dividends in the public sector.
The approach we recommend involves creating and maintaining a community – a permission asset if you like – that attracts, captures and leaves a legacy of goodwill around the interactions that occur for your brand or organization on a daily basis. To see this in action look at how Marlon Parker achieved it with the Cape Peninsula University of Technology in South Africa – as featured on the BBC World Service. Also listen to our Upstart Radio interview with Marlon.
It’s an approach that can lend strength to many public sector initiatives and help drive innovation back from the field to the project manager to help bolster already overstretched marketing teams. Check out these examples of how mobile is used in education, banking & financial services for the “bottom of the pyramid”, and health care (also read Priyanka’s blog for an excellent insight into mobile being used for health communication) and decided for yourself how much more effective are they/could they be with a community angle. If you need evidence, listen to Bernard Hor from Summer Sands and his interview on Upstart Radio on how they leveraged the target market to spread health care and social programs in often difficult to reach communities in Asia.
Needless to say, mobile is a key part in the wider media mix to enable multiple touch points between the brand/organization and the community. Mobile is not the answer, it’s a part of the solution. Used wisely mobile can be an extremely effective tool in touching and “acquiring” interest in your community as demonstrated here by Hans Mol of Be-Mobile. Yet, as Hans himself mentioned in his Upstart Radio interview on youth marketing in South Africa (available from 8th September), mobile will only work if your message is first relevant. Using mobile to reach communities without first establishing your relevance is wasteful yet widely practised.
Bret Bernhoft reiterated this in his recent Upstart Radio interview when addressing the key value-add of a youth marketer in working with communities “Once you’ve established the relevance of your brand or organization to the community, that’s your job done right there”
As Seth Godin said “new media is but a promise – a promise that you’ll include the customer in the message. When the promise is backed up by ‘new media but business as usual’ customers quickly lose trust”.
Here’s a great example of mobile being used to both create and engage communities: MXit in South Africa.
Developing partnership marketing approaches around a community are key; an approach that implies marketing with not to. It’s not rocket science, so much so that even mobile phone retailers such as Phones 4U are scratching the surface of partnership marketing.
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